Rodman's stab at bastketball diplomacy no slam-dunk

Rodman's stab at bastketball diplomacy no slam-dunk

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: It’s being touted as a landmark in sports diplomacy, but really it’s all about the money — and publicity.

Dennis Rodman and three players from the Harlem Globetrotters, plus camera crew, are in the North Korean capital Pyongyang. Promoters are touting their visit as a chance to play exhibition games and have some “fun,” while filming for an HBO documentary. It’s the basketball version of ping-pong diplomacy, they claim.

They ignore the fact their visit to the repressive Stalinist state embarrasses the U.S., which is along with China and other nations is trying to restart nuclear disarmament talks with Pyongyang.

Then there are increasing tensions in the region as North Korea spooks its neigbours with sabre-rattling. Last week, it illegally exploded a nuclear device and threatened neighbouring South Korea with annihilation (at the UN Conference on Disarmament no less).

Pyongyang is also is promising more tests. Meanwhile, it starves most of its citizens while indoctrinating them with hatred for the U.S.

Not the most fertile ground for basketball diplomacy, one would have thought. But promoters say Kim Jong-il was a big fan of the 1990s Chicago Bulls and his son, Kim Jong-un shares his father’s enthusiasm for the sport.

The trip did not get off to a good start, notes Chris Chase at USA Today, with Rodman showing himself ge0graphically challenged.

Exactly 41 years ago, Richard Nixon was in China, wrapping up his historic eight-day visit to the Asian country. Dennis Rodman’s trip to North Korea is reminiscent of Nixon’s travels, only with more lip rings and basketball; less historic importance and one cultural gaffe that insulted the singer of 2012’s greatest novelty hit. Upon arriving in Pyongyang for his HBO documentary, Rodman sent a flurry of excited tweets … One of them mentioned the stars he might see in celebrity-mad North Korea.“Maybe I’ll run into the Gangnam Style dude while I’m here,” he tweeted. Except Psy, the singer of Gangnam Style, is from South Korea, not North Korea.

The Washington Post‘s Max Fisher chews over the ethics of a visit to the Stalinist state.

The debate often turns on money. Trips to North Korea are expensive and must go entirely through the North Korean government, which badly needs every scrap of foreign currency it can get. Handing several thousand dollars to a regime that runs a rogue nuclear weapons program and a vast network of gulags is distasteful for obvious reasons, though some point out that this is a relatively small amount of money unlikely to determine Kim Jong Eun’s ultimate fate. Either way, there are larger issues here.
Scholars like Andrei Lankov write that, because Kim Jong-un’s legitimacy rests in part on his regime’s argument that North Koreans are very rich and everyone else very poor, exposing North Koreans to the truth will make them doubt their government. Lankov and others also argue that meeting foreigners can help North Koreans learn that Americans are not evil imperialists and amoral beasts.

At Wired, Spencer Ackerman takes issue with Rodman’s characterization of the trip as “fun.”

North Korea’s reward for its recent nuclear test is a visit from the Worm.
All-time NBA great Dennis Rodman has arrived in Pyongyang for a publicity stunt and a bit of basketball diplomacy. Invited a month ago by a North Korean basketball association — which is apparently a thing — the fierce rebounder told reporters at the airport that he’s just trying to put on a good show for the kids. “Hopefully, it’ll be some fun,” Rodman said.
“Fun” is in short supply in the world’s last remaining Stalinist dictatorship. Here’s what isn’t, according to Amnesty International’s 2012 overview of North Korea: “Credible reports estimated that up to 200,000 prisoners were held in horrific conditions in six sprawling political prison camps, including the notorious Yodok facility.” Such conditions included “hazardous forced labour, inadequate food, beatings, totally inadequate medical care and unhygienic living conditions.”

Alexander Abad-Santos, a contributor to The Atlantic Wire, points out the trip has done nothing to temper Pyongyang’s bellicosity.

Dennis Rodman [is] on a diplomatic trip to North Korea, having landed in Pyongyang [Tuesday] night. So how’s he doing? Well, Pyongyang on Wednesday warned that they could totally send an atomic bomb over to the U.S. if they wanted. “North Korea warned Wednesday that the United States is now within the range of its strategic rockets and atomic weapons, and stressed it is now a country that can protect itself from foreign aggression,” reads a report from South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. That warning came by way of Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean propaganda site … Yonhap interprets the propaganda as follows: “Uriminzokkiri also said that the United States, instead of learning from its defeat in the Korean War (1950-53), has stepped up efforts to invade the North. It said that Washington and its followers should realize the capability of the North to deal a decisive blow to its enemies and refrain from further provocations.”